Babylon Labs and SatLayer Forge Alliance to Unlock DeFi for Bitcoin

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Nov 27, 2024, 11:00 ET

Babylon Labs aligns with SatLayer to advance Bitcoin's staking and restaking capabilities.

TORTOLA, British Virgin Islands, Nov. 27, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Babylon Labs, a lead developer of Bitcoin's leading staking protocol with over $2 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL), announced today an alliance with SatLayer to advance Bitcoin's staking and restaking capabilities. This collaboration creates new opportunities for Bitcoin holders by unlocking enhanced liquidity, shared security, and capital efficiency across applications, infrastructure, and blockchains.

As part of this alliance, SatLayer will be the premier restaking platform for the Babylon protocol by implementing a sophisticated suite of smart contracts on Babylon Chain with minimal trust assumptions. These smart contracts enable fully programmable BTC slashing, marking a significant advancement in Bitcoin's utility within decentralized finance.

"At Babylon Labs, we're committed to building a more secure and interconnected blockchain ecosystem. This collaboration with SatLayer allows us to extend Bitcoin's robust security to a wider range of applications and infrastructure," said Fisher Yu, CTO of Babylon Labs.

This enables the Bitcoin staked to secure everything: Not only infrastructure such as PoS chains and rollups, but the full stack of apps and infrastructure on top. With this alliance, the Bitcoin ecosystem will speedrun to feature parity with Ethereum on staking and restaking.

Through this alliance, the Babylon protocol will extend over $2 billion worth of Bitcoin shared security to PoS blockchains. The liquidity of those bitcoins are unlocked through established Liquid Staking Tokens (LST) projects including Lombard, Solv, and Bedrock. SatLayer will amplify these benefits by extending both security and liquidity features to applications and infrastructure built within these ecosystems.

Bitcoin's Expanding Role

Bitcoin continues to demonstrate its dominance through unprecedented institutional adoption. The success of Bitcoin ETFs has set new records for institutional investment, while sovereign nations are increasingly evaluating Bitcoin for their strategic reserves. Additionally, major Layer-1 networks, including Solana, are introducing Bitcoin representations such as wrapped BTC and Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs) to integrate Bitcoin's value into their ecosystems.

Apps Are the Future: SatLayer & Babylon at the Forefront

Applications are the key drivers of further crypto adoption and innovation. By combining Babylon's robust infrastructure with SatLayer's advanced restaking capabilities, developers now have unprecedented opportunities to build sophisticated applications leveraging Bitcoin's economic security and liquidity.

"Babylon Labs and SatLayer share a vision for Bitcoin's future as the cornerstone of decentralized ecosystems. Together, we enable applications and infrastructure to harness Bitcoin's unmatched security while expanding its liquidity through programmable restaking frameworks. The launch of SatLayer's devnet opens up a new era of Bitcoin-powered innovation for builders everywhere," said Luke Xie, Co-Founder of SatLayer.

SatLayer Devnet Launch

SatLayer also unveils its devnet today, providing comprehensive resources for builders interested in leveraging this new infrastructure. Detailed documentation is available at docs.satlayer.xyz. The team recently demonstrated their commitment to the developer community through participation as mentors, grant sponsor, and judge at the Babylon Hacker House in Bangkok (November 5-9, 2024), where over 70 developers created innovative solutions using Babylon Chain and an early preview of SatLayer's Bitcoin Validated Services (BVS) Framework.

Ecosystem Initiatives

To help BVS builders turn their vision into reality, Babylon Labs and SatLayer are preparing to launch several exciting new initiatives to empower builders to innovate, collaborate, and scale:

A comprehensive incentive program for ecosystem developers
Dedicated technical support and resources to ease development
Mentorship and support on go-to-market, growth, and fundraising

Start building BVS dApps on SatLayer and Babylon Chain today with the developer docs at docs.satlayer.xyz

About Babylon

Babylon is a project that focuses on Bitcoin security sharing protocols with a vision of building a Bitcoin-secured decentralized world. Its latest development is the world's first trustless and self-custodial Bitcoin staking protocol, which enables Bitcoin holders to stake their BTC on Proof-of-Stake (PoS) systems such as PoS chains, L2s, Data Availability (DA) layers, etc, enabling them to earn staking rewards without the need for third-party custody, bridge solutions, or wrapping services.

Babylon combines the high security and wide adoption of Bitcoin with the efficiency and scalability of PoS systems, increasing Bitcoin's utility. Babylon was founded in 2022 by Stanford Professor David Tse and Dr. Fisher Yu. Professor Tse is a member of the U.S. Academy of Engineering and is renowned as the inventor of the legendary proportional-fair scheduling algorithm for wireless communications. Babylon is led by a team of consensus protocol researchers and experienced layer 1 engineers from around the world.

For more information about Babylon Labs, a developer of the Babylon Bitcoin staking protocol, please visit:

Website | Twitter | Discord | Linkedin

About SatLayer:

SatLayer is the leading restaking platform unlocking Bitcoin's full potential for capital efficiency, liquidity, and shared security.

By deploying as a set of smart contracts on Babylon, SatLayer enables full programmability of slashing conditions, such as node liveness and challenge proofs, for Bitcoin, the largest and most widely trusted cryptocurrency. This framework allows dApps and infrastructure, such as bridges, DEXs, launchpads, and oracles to be crypto-economically secured by restaked BTC as Bitcoin Validated Services (BVSes).

Founded by MIT alumni in early 2024 and backed by leading investors including Hack VC, Castle Island Ventures, Franklin Templeton, OKX Ventures, and Mirana Ventures, SatLayer is bringing restaking and shared security on Bitcoin to feature-parity with Ethereum, increasing Bitcoin's utility in decentralized finance and the broader ecosystem.

For more information about SatLayer Labs, a developer of the SatLayer restaking platform, please visit:

Website | Twitter | Discord | Linkedin

SOURCE Babylon